After five years of fruitful collaboration, UNCTAD and GTZ now hand the Business Linkages Programme (Programa Vinculos) over to SEBRAE – the Brazilian Support Service for Micro and Small Enterprises. This High Level Policy Workshop is organized to summarize the results of the project and to discuss furthers steps to ensure its sustainability and the collaboration between SEBRAE and other partners.

The High Level Workshop is expected to contribute towards raising awareness and sharing best practices on business linkages policies aimed at local suppliers’ development. The outcome of the meeting will be used to facilitate a checklist of policy initiatives to advise the Brazilian Government on how to support the implementation of business linkages in all the Brazilian States, building stronger supply capabilities responsive to market demands, promoting technology development and transfer, encourage enterprise networking, increasing productivity and improving the competitiveness of SMEs.

The event will be chaired by Ambassador Rubens Ricupero, the former Secretary General of UNCTAD, and will count on the participation of high level officials in Brazil, companies’ executives from corporations and small and medium enterprises that participated in the programme and international experts.